TELEVISION

TELEVISION; Lust, Suicide And Baby-Theft On Eaton Place

Published: September 3, 1989

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Timidity isn't the only explanation for some of these omissions. Mr. Sarson argues that the American public, deprived of those early black-and-white programs, would have got the wrong idea about both Lady Marjorie and Mrs. Bridges if it had been instantly plunged into a tale showing them at their most uncharacteristic. Nevertheless, the result was that viewers missed what Jean Marsh, for one, thinks were particularly strong episodes.

''I thought our first ones tougher, harsher, bolder and better than those which followed,'' Miss Marsh, one of the show's creators, says. ''I liked the black-and-white ones especially. It was difficult to shoot the kitchen in color and make it as cold as it should be. Maybe later on the series got a bit more sentimental, a little more soapy.''

It is a scene in episode three that Miss Collins remembers as her best: a tense, poignant argument with Miss Marsh as Rose, the head parlormaid, about the humiliation of (Sarah's words) ''livin' everyfink through them upstairs like we was vegetables that had no feelings.''

Early on, ''Upstairs, Downstairs'' has a social bite, an indignation at the class divide, which later became softened and smothered. One wasn't allowed to forget that, while some snoozed on their sofas, others could be casually thrown onto the streets without so much as the reference that might get them another menial job and so save them from starvation or prostitution.

Indeed, the most grueling episode of all, ''I Dies From Love,'' involves the Irish skivvy whose romantic dreams of escape from kitchen slavery seem fulfilled when a handsome footman deigns to notice her. That she should be disillusioned isn't surprising, though the intensity of her despair, and the violence of its results, still seem surprising indeed. You don't often find a likable young woman hanging from the ceiling or being carted off to be dismembered in a medical research lab in a popular TV series.

By now, the series that L.W.T. almost rejected has been seen by a billion people in 50 countries and has made international reputations for its leading performers, such as Pauline Collins, who introduces all the present programs for WNYC.

Although Miss Collins actually appeared in only 12 episodes, she still feels that ''Upstairs, Downstairs'' was the ''great sea change which put me in the public eye, established me as an actress and enriched my work hugely.'' Without it, she might not have landed on Broadway in ''Shirley Valentine'' this year, nor have won a Tony award for her performance last May. She also stars in the recently released film version of the play.

But it was the rapport, the camaraderie, the shared sense of fun among all the cast members that finally explains the promise of the ''lost episodes'' and the success of the series as a whole. Upstairs may have been upstairs and downstairs downstairs, but together they formed an acting ensemble whose strengths and subtleties television has rarely if ever managed to duplicate since.